I’ve just noticed that Amazon UK’s Affiliate program is beta testing a new type of ad called ‘New Self-Optimising Links’.
They describe it as:
“Self-Optimising Links feature products chosen automatically based on the content of your site. To create Self-Optimising Links simply modify the template and appearance elements and copy the resulting code on to your site. With Self-Optimising Links, you do not need to chose which product, product line or even keyword that best fits a page. Our algorithm will take care of reviewing your site and selecting relevant product offerings. At present we are offering Self-Optimising Links as a BETA to our Associates.”
While this will be welcomed by heavy affiliate program users it is something to be careful of if you’re an AdSense publisher as using these ‘self-optimising’ links means you’re using a contextual way of serving ads – which from my reading of AdSense breaks their TOS.
Update – speaking of Amazon and contextual ads, David just sent me an email telling me about another service that will serve Amazon affiliate ads to your blog – contextually. It’s called TicTap Contextual Ads. in short – they scan your page and find Amazon products to match. They put their own code in the fourth ad and you get the others.
As with the Amazon UK beta above keep in mind that TicTap is contextual and in it’s default mode it cannot be used with AdSense (or YPN from what I can work out). There is a way of making it non contextual according to TicTap’s FAQ page by switching off the contextual nature of the ads (similar to what Chitika did before changing their default to non contextual) – but you might want to double check with AdSense.
